Let's Talk About Adultery

[onionsoupmix]

I've been thinking about adultery all day. It's pretty confusing, actually.

Take Mei Sotah for example. Here's the Rambam's run down of how it works. Pretty wild.

But the craziest part is that she doesn't have to drink the water. She can refuse to drink it or admit her guilt and then she gets a divorce and loses her kesuba money. No drinking the

Comments

[onionsoupmix]

no, sotah has supposedly happened.

[onionsoupmix]

The personal agency the woman has is astounding to you? You mean compared to her husband who can have an affair with any single girl he likes and have almost no consequences? The personal agency the girl has is a choice between death or being a humiliated, impoverished banished woman.

None of it makes sense.

[hamaskil]

Приходит на беседу к духовнику девушка - духовное чадо (длинная до пят юбка, скромная блуза и платок, закрывающий всё и вся). Обращается, опустив очи долу к Батюшке:
Девушка - "Батюшка! Выскажите свою концептуальную оценку по поводу последней монографии протоиерея Иоанна Мейердорфа, посвящённой им Варлаамитско Паламитской полемике, написанной в эпоху окормления им русской диаспоры в Париже?"
Батюшка - "ЗАМУЖ ДУРА ! CРОЧНО ЗАМУЖ" !!!!!"

Re: None of it makes sense.

[onionsoupmix]

yeah,lol, I tried that and it didn't quite work:)

[zev_ari]

1. Well, let's consider the fact that, if guilty, she *did* commit a capital crime. She gets away with it because of the technicality of there being no witnesses. But the fact remains that she did commit adultery -- so that God would choose to "waive" the technicality (since He knows for sure whether or not she's guilty) is not too much of a mystery

[onionsoupmix]

for number three: the peace of mind that the husband would need from a suspected adulteress is nothing compared to the peace of mind that a community would need from a suspected serial killer.

For number four, it wouldn't be that hard. This applies also if the men are her brothers or father. At the shabbos table in front of some guests, he tells her not to be alone with her father. And then he can easily orchestrate it in such a way that she violates that. Poof! Goodbye kesuba. No need to even hire the witnesses.

משרבו המנאפים פסקו המים המרים ורבי ...Sotah 47:2

[stjust]

early on, from talmudic time, the rabbis must have realised that this is one of the silliest laws (literally) in the (holy) book and decreed the elimination of it's practice, along with others like the egloh arufoh etc...

Re: משרבו המנאפים פסקו המים המרים ורבי ...Sotah 47:2

[onionsoupmix]

The whole idea was that if the husband himself was immorally behaved, then the mei sotah wouldn't work, that's why it says misherabu hamenafim....

But you are right, it does sound like an excuse. Because there's a whole another section about how if the woman was meritorious ( she encouraged her husband to study, etc.) she did not die right away, maybe a few months or a year later. It seems like the mei sotah didn't work sometimes and then they came up with reasons that the process malfunctioned and when they had to keep coming up with these excuses, they just got tired of it and cancelled the whole thing.

But those people who believe in the divinity of this law, how do they answer?

Re: משרבו המנאפים פסקו המים המרים ורבי ...Sotah 47:2

[stjust]

u r right, osm.
an amazing curiosity, despite all it's silliness, it seems that (at least) some in chabad, study BT Sota every year 'bein pessach leatzeres' every day of the sfeeroh 1 daf @ as it includes 49 dafs. so they have a siyum in shavuot.
i wonder if they reserve this veneration only to Sotah (and if so why?) or to the other massekhta that has 49 dafs: shevuos as well.
so I heard from a serious chabad baal tshuva. is that true? boy that is weird.

Re: משרבו המנאפים פסקו המים המרים ורבי ...Sotah 47:2

[onionsoupmix]

I was looking over maseches sotah and it has a lot of aggadta, it has the whole yetzias mitrayim in it, so maybe that is why they learn it.

[sethg_prime]

I am skeptical of the whole enterprise of ta`amei ha-mitzvot-what, fundamentally, is wrong with a nice bowl of clam chowder?-but let me take a crack at #3:

Adultery is unlike murder or rape in that both parties are probably motivated to cover up the crime. A murderer leaves behind a body, and while they didn’t have CSI two thousand years ago, the relevant authorities could have at least gone around asking who might have wanted so-and-so dead and so forth. A rape victim is only going to keep silent so long as she (or he) fears retaliation or fears not being believed by the authorities. But two people who commit adultery will want to do the deed in private and maintain the fiction that nothing is going on indefinitely: if they remain sexually attracted to each other they will want to have more opportunities to commit the crime, and even if they don’t, one party can’t accuse the other without confessing at the same time

[onionsoupmix]

Adultery is unlike murder or rape in that both parties are probably motivated to cover up the crime. A murderer leaves behind a body, and while they didn’t have CSI two thousand years ago, the relevant authorities could have at least gone around asking who might have wanted so-and-so dead and so forth. A rape victim is only going to keep silent so long as she (or he) fears retaliation or fears not being believed by the authorities. But two people who commit adultery will want to do the deed in private and maintain the fiction that nothing is going on indefinitely: if they remain sexually attracted to each other they will want to have more opportunities to commit the crime, and even if they don’t, one party can’t accuse the other without confessing at the same time.Even if the authorities go around asking who might have wanted so and so dead, they can't do anything about it unless there are two witnesses who saw the deed. So you could easily have a mass murderer who is never caught and punished because he is just a suspected murderer.